“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Quoted in [Garnett, Richard, Life of Emerson, 1888, http://www.poemhunter.com/john-arbuthnot/quotations/poet-32922/page-1/, 1888, Chapter 7]

'Memorandum dated March 2003' in Steven Weisman ed., "Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary"

Page 269.
Stepping Westward (1965)

A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
Context: I need not excuse myself to your Lordship, nor, I think, to any honest man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal, and in a good cause. I have defended natural religion against a confederacy of atheists and divines. I now plead for natural society against politicians, and for natural reason against all three. When the world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when I shall be more indifferent about its temper, my thoughts may become more public. In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom, and in the bosoms of such men as are fit to be initiated in the sober mysteries of truth and reason. My antagonists have already done as much as I could desire. Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them all. The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans have been jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have in their turns proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse! Observe, my Lord, I pray you, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power is founded. It was observed that men had ungovernable passions, which made it necessary to guard against the violence they might offer to each other. They appointed governors over them for this reason! But a worse and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the governors? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? In vain they change from a single person to a few. These few have the passions of the one; and they unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their lawless passions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly to the many. The case is worse; their passions are less under the government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended against all attacks by their multitude.

Concerning right-wing radio shortly before the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, in NOW (17 December 2004) http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript351_full.html
Context: On the eve of the election last month my wife Judith and I were driving home late in the afternoon and turned on the radio for the traffic and weather. What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography: lies, distortions, and half-truths — half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion.

As quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 223

Property (1935)
Context: The political horizon would be greatly clarified if the voters were offered the choice of three parties representing three strategies: A conservative party committed to the preservation of individualism, perhaps in a highly modified form; a communist party bent upon revolutionary changes through violent seizure of power, confiscation, and a proletarian dictatorship; and a radical party seeking to socialize the basic industries and to move toward an equalization of economic privilege through purchase, taxation, and drastic regulation, without resorting to confiscation or armed seizure of power.

Speech, Marion, Ohio (31 July 1875)

2000-09, Happiness Can’t Be Faked, 2008